The Last Place on Earth

by Carol Snow

  Did those numbers represent animals? People? Illnesses? Deaths? Were they actual cases or projections? The tension in the house had grown so thick, I didn’t dare ask anyone.

  That night, Mr. Waxweiler announced in his high voice, “The Platts and Wards won’t be joining us. At least not soon. Perhaps not ever.”

  “Are they sheltering in place?” Gwendolyn asked.

  “Yes.”

  “As we should have done,” Mrs. Waxweiler said, sounding bitter.

  Her husband ignored her. “There is an illness in the Platt family. Their youngest, Sebastian. Dr. Platt is ministering to him at home. No other family members have shown signs of infection.”

  “Yet,” Mrs. Waxweiler muttered.

  Later, when I was walking to the bus, I heard them in the side yard, arguing. “You promised there would be a doctor here!” Mrs. Waxweiler said. “We could be home right now, eating food from our stockpile, watching the news.…”

  “Until they stop broadcasting,” Mr. Waxweiler countered. “Or the power grid goes down. Eventually our food would run out. Or it would be stolen. We’ve got a week, maybe two, before civilization collapses. After that, there’s no getting out of the cities. It’ll be a war zone down there.”

  “But the cell phone towers are still working.”

  “Today they are. Tomorrow, who knows?”

  Henry and I sat next to each other at meals, but I wouldn’t look at him except to implore, When? If he made me wait much longer to get word to my mother and Peter, I would sneak off in the middle of the night. Sooner or later I’d hit a bigger road. I’d never find my way back to the spot where Peter had dropped me off, but at some point the dirt road in front of the compound had to join up to something bigger. Someone would drive by and help me.

  Or, you know, leave my mutilated body on the side of the road. One of those.

  In response to my question, Henry would give me a pleading, helpless look, and I’d go back to jabbing at whatever nonmeat items were on my plate. My clothes were getting so droopy, I needed a piece of string to hold up my shorts.

  Nights, Henry had lookout duty, but he didn’t ask me to join him. I would have said no. I think he knew that.

  At last, on the evening after Mr. Waxweiler’s announcement, Henry slipped me a note: Meet at Martin’s car—daybreak.

  * * *

  Martin’s car stood out as the only small vehicle in the compound. No duct tape or old bumper stickers marred the bright blue, two-door sedan. Inside, though, it was just as filthy as Peter’s junky car. Crumbs and dust coated gray velour upholstery, while the floor lay buried under gas receipts, Subway wrappers, a Best Buy catalog, and two empty Starbucks cups, one marked Martin, the other Sienna.

  It was still dark when we pulled out of the driveway. Martin kept the headlights off until we made it out of the compound gates. We drove slowly down the rough lane, Martin’s shocks protesting. At last we turned onto the unpaved road that would take us out of the forest.

  Martin plugged his iPod into the stereo. Soon, the car was filled with a hip-hop song that played so constantly last year, I thought I would never want to hear it again. Now it sounded like normal life. Like sanity. Like home.

  After maybe five minutes, we passed the little clearing where I had left Peter. It seemed so long ago. We continued on and on, bouncing and swaying as the car twisted and turned through the mountains and along perilous cliffs. We saw no signs of humanity. Henry had been right. If I had fled the compound on foot, I really could have died.

  At last, the road smoothed out. Then the trees thinned and the vista opened. The sun was just coming up. The pink sky lighting up the mountains was so beautiful, it made the scene look unreal.

  When the road forked, Martin took a right. Soon, Lake Casitas shimmered in the early-morning light. Martin pulled over to the side of the road and turned off the engine. The music stopped.

  “This is the magic spot. We should get reception here.” It was the first thing anyone had said since we’d left the compound. Martin pulled a cheap phone from his pocket and pushed the power button. Outside, the sky gave way to shades of lavender and blue.

  “Your parents let you keep your phone?” I asked from the back. Henry was in the front passenger seat, which made it easier to avoid eye contact.

  “No way,” Martin said. “My father canceled our plan. Because, you know, he didn’t want the government using our GPS against us. Because we’re so important that they’d want to track us down. Ugh. This thing is so slow.” He shook the phone, as if that would make it load faster.

  “Is that why your phone was disconnected, too?” I asked Henry.

  “Yeah.” He tried to make eye contact, but I turned my attention back to Martin.

  “Your parents must have a phone. How else would they get their information?”

  “My dad’s got one, but it’s not on a plan, and he only turns it on when he’s at least twenty miles from the compound.” Martin shook his head with disgust. “He loves all the fake military crap. The drills and the maps and the camo. My mom just went along with all the survivalist stuff because she figured it was just a hobby for my dad. Like fishing or golf.”

  “But it looks like maybe the preppers were right,” I said.

  Martin kept pushing at the buttons. “You can be right and still be crazy. You can be right and still forget what matters.”

  “I’m sorry about your dog,” I said.

  At first I didn’t think he heard me. But then he let out a long, sad sigh. “Mabrey was such a good little guy. And he wasn’t sick. There was no reason … no reason at all.”

  “Where’d you get that phone?” I asked.

  “Target. Three months ago.” Martin glanced back at me, a half smile on his face. “My mom said I was spending too much time texting and talking to my girlfriend. Talk about surveillance. She was supposedly worried that it might affect my grades, but it was obvious she just didn’t like Sienna. I bought this phone so she couldn’t track my calls.”

  “Sienna … is she on cheer?”

  “Yeah.”

  Martin’s girlfriend was a year ahead of me, but she was one of those people always surrounded by a pack of friends, her name constantly being shouted in the hallways. She had hair bleached a little too light for her olive skin, enormous brown eyes, and a loud laugh.

  Martin said, “A signal—finally!”

  “Can I call my mom now?” As soon as I said it, I realized just how afraid I was of making the call. Because what if she didn’t pick up? What would that mean?

  “Doubt the signal will be strong enough for a call. But you’ll be able to get a text through. Let me see what Sienna says first.”

  He pressed the little buttons on the phone and frowned. “Nice,” he said, voice tight with sarcasm.

  “What?” Henry asked.

  “It’s an old text, but Sienna said she forgives me for bailing on Homecoming because it’s been canceled anyway. Does she really … oh my God!”

  “What?”

  “Oh no. No.”

  “What?”

  Martin looked up from the phone, eyes wide with horror. “You know a guy named Rudy Barretta? Your grade, honors kid?”

  “Yeah. We were lab partners freshman year.”

  “He’s dead.” His words hung in the air.

  Moments passed before any of us could speak. Rudy Barretta, dead? It was unthinkable. I’d just seen him a couple of weeks ago. He once asked me to a dance. Rudy Barretta could not be dead! The numbers and pushpins on the maps had been frightening, but this name, this face, made the whole thing real.

  “Anyone else?” Henry asked at last.

  Martin blinked at the phone. “Sienna sent me a bunch of texts. I’ve only read the first two.” Hands trembling, he poked at the buttons.

  “Mrs. Jessup has it, too. You know the English teacher? She’s—let me check Sienna’s next text.… Crap.” He let the phone fall in his lap and stared first at Henry and then at me as if we could say s
omething to make it all better. “Gone.”

  “So it’s really happening?” I said. “In school? At home?”

  Martin read through all of Sienna’s texts, reporting as he went.

  One freshman and two sophomores at our school were dead; eight others were in the hospital. All local schools were closed until further notice.

  Rudy Barretta’s only sister, a freshman at Cal State Fullerton—gone. There would be no funeral. No one would come. Too dangerous.

  Hospitals overwhelmed. Restaurants closed. Mall open for now but probably not much longer. No bottled water in the stores. No Purell. A run on first-aid kits, canned foods, ice.

  “Why ice?” I asked.

  “In case the power goes out.”

  “Why would the power go out?”

  Henry explained, “If things get bad enough, people will refuse to go to work. The grid would go down because there’d be no one there to keep things running. From there, it’s just a hop, skip, and jump to complete economic collapse.”

  “So … it really is the end of the world?”

  Martin shook his head. “No.”

  “Not yet,” Henry said.

  “I need to talk to my mother.” My voice was shrill.

  “Doubt the call will go through, but you can try.” Martin handed his phone back to me.

  Hands shaking, I thumbed in my mother’s number, but Martin was right. Reception was sketchy, and it didn’t connect. I switched to texting mode, adding Peter to the message before realizing that I didn’t have the vaguest idea what I was supposed to say to them.

  Hi, I began. And then I deleted it.

  I miss you, I tried next. No.

  Sorry … but that made it sound like I had chosen to leave them. I would never desert my family on purpose.

  At last I went with this: I am safe and pray you are too. Henry’s house has everything you need. Go there and don’t leave. I will come home as soon as I can. I love you. Daisy

  I added the security system codes and then hit the send button. And then I sent them another message: Please text back so I know you are okay.

  After I passed the phone back, Martin hunched over it for a long time, sending a long text to Sienna.

  “She texted back!” he said.

  “My mom?” Hope washed over me like a fever.

  “No—Sienna. Thank God, she’s okay.”

  Henry turned to face me. At last I met his eyes. In that moment, I understood why his parents had run away. I couldn’t bear losing Peter and my mother. I’d do anything to save them.

  “Sienna’s got a sore throat. She’s freaking out.” Martin put his hand over his mouth and closed his eyes.

  I looked out the window. The sun had fully risen over the mountains. It was going to be a beautiful day.

  At last, Martin turned the engine back on and plugged his iPod back into the radio. Hip-hop filled the car, but this time it didn’t make me feel normal. Nothing could.

  Out on the road, Martin continued in the direction we had been heading, around the far side of Lake Casitas, away from the forest. Down. “I need to talk to her,” he said. “We’ll get better reception farther down the mountain.”

  Soon, we passed a few low houses, and Martin pulled into a dinky gas station. After passing bills to an attendant who opened the door just a crack, Martin filled his car tank. Then he retrieved two plastic red gas cans out of the trunk and filled them as well.

  Henry said, “Mr. Waxweiler said a lot of places have run out of gas. We’re lucky to get some.”

  “Yeah. I’m feeling really lucky right now.”

  “They’re going to be okay.” Henry offered his hand, but I refused to take it.

  “You don’t know that.” My voice was hoarse. “All you know is that you’re going to be okay, and your family is safe. But my family, the rest of the world…”

  Martin got back in the car and pulled his cell phone from his pocket.

  “Did my mother text back? Or my brother?”

  “No. Sorry.”

  He started up the car and pulled back out to the road, heading down, down—toward civilization and the sea.

  Twenty-Nine

  WE CONTINUED DOWN the winding road, toward the ocean. Toward freeways and stores and schools. Toward people.

  A pickup truck passed us. “That’s the first car we’ve seen in a while,” I said.

  Martin said, “Just wait. When everybody decides it’s time to G-O-O-D, this road will be jammed.”

  “I forget what that stands for.”

  “Get out of Dodge.”

  I gazed out at the empty road. “What good would it do to take off for the mountains if you don’t have any place to go once you get there?”

  “It could get dangerous in town,” Martin said. “Lootings, shootings. Plus, people will want to get away from the epidemic. They’ll figure they’ve got less chance of getting sick in a place with no people, even if that means sleeping in tents and trying to survive off the land.”

  “Did you ask Sienna to come with you?” I asked.

  “I asked her,” Martin said. “My parents almost killed me, but I couldn’t just leave without saying anything.”

  “She said no?”

  “She was mostly worried about what everyone was going to say when I disappeared like that. She didn’t believe things could get this bad. But then, neither did I. I didn’t blame her for not leaving town. If it had been up to me, I would have stayed, too.”

  At the bottom of the mountain, we saw signs for the 101 freeway. Martin drove past the ramps. We rounded a bend, and the ocean spread out below us, deep blue and sparkling. We continued along the frontage road.

  I opened my window. Salty air with a touch of fog brushed my face. The road wasn’t crowded, but there were other people out, all going about their daily business in delivery trucks and SUVs and little sedans.

  Just as I had almost convinced myself that things weren’t too bad, I saw a hand-painted sign in front of a gas station that said NO GAS. Next to it was a convenience store, also with a sign: NO CASH. NO BOTTLED WATER. NO PROPANE. CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. STAY SAFE!

  Martin turned into a quiet residential area of tiny bungalows. He pulled over and got out of the car to phone Sienna. Mad Plague could be transmitted through droplets in the air, but the street was deserted except for a few stray dogs.

  That was odd. Occasionally a dog got out of its yard and ran loose in the streets, but never had I seen more than one loose dog out alone.

  “People are afraid of fleas,” Henry said. “So they’re setting their animals loose.”

  “What about shelters?”

  “They’re probably full. Or closed.”

  I twisted around in time to see a little terrier paw at some garbage cans. It took all my strength not to leap out of the car and rescue the little guy. But what good would that do? Mr. and Mrs. Waxweiler abandoned their own dog. If I tried to bring a stray into the compound, it would be banished—or worse. My mother never let us a have a dog because she said it wasn’t fair to leave it alone all day. But if we’d gotten one, she never would have deserted it, that much I knew.

  Across the street, a woman walked by, hauling grocery bags. That seemed encouraging: Stores were open; people were out. Plus, she wasn’t near enough to Martin to pose a threat.

  Then I noticed that that the woman was wearing a surgical mask. I rolled up my window.

  Martin got back in the car. “Sienna doesn’t have a fever. And she thinks maybe the sore throat is because she’s been crying so much. Everyone in her family is fine so far, but they’ve been quarantined because one of her mother’s coworkers is sick.”

  For the first time, I noticed a yellow sheet of paper taped to the front door of the nearest bungalow. The house across the street had one as well.

  “When does the quarantine end?”

  “If no one shows any symptoms after a week, they can leave the house. Not that they’ll want to.”

  “Can I call my mo
ther?”

  The phone rang four times and went to voice mail. I tried Peter: no answer. Then I tried my mother one more time before giving up. I gave the phone back to Martin.

  “Sorry.”

  I nodded. If I tried to speak, I’d probably cry.

  “As long as we’re down here, let’s go for a ride,” Martin said.

  We got on the 101 freeway and drove up the coast, the Pacific Ocean on our left, the Santa Ynez Mountains on our right. Soon, the city of Santa Barbara, with its white stucco buildings, red roofs, and palm trees, rose above us like a misplaced Mediterranean dream. It looked like the kind of place where everybody was happy all the time, where nothing could ever go wrong.

  Martin took an exit into the city, and we drove through quiet streets lined with pretty pastel houses landscaped with roses and bougainvillea, birds-of-paradise, and palms. About every fifth house had a yellow quarantine notice on the front door.

  When we spied an H street sign, Martin followed it to a hospital. We couldn’t get close to the building because so many cars were double-parked on the street. In the parking lot, tents had been set up to treat the overflow of patients. And still there wasn’t enough room for the stricken: A long line snaked around the rows of cars. Medical workers in hazmat suits wound their way around the crowd with water and blankets, clipboards and blood pressure cuffs.

  “They didn’t run away,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “The hospital workers.”

  Henry shook his head. “They’ll wish they had.”

  “Not necessarily,” Martin said. “At least they won’t have to live with the guilt.”

  Before I knew it, I was crying. And I hate to cry. Henry leaned over the front seat to rub my shoulder. “It’s okay. Everything is going to be okay.”

  I shook my head: Nothing would ever be okay again. I took deep breaths until I managed to control myself, because really, I had no right to feel bad when all these people were suffering and I was safe. My mother and Peter would go to Henry’s house. They would get through this. We all would. Anything else was unthinkable.